Copy AWS EBS Snapshots Between Regions

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has added the ability to copy Elastic Block Store (EBS) instances between different regions. That’s particularly useful for companies which have set up AWS applications in the past and now want to utilise them in the recently-launched Australian region.

You can make snapshots of any completed EBS from the main AWS management console, or through the command line. You’ll pay data transfer fees for the copy, and ongoing storage fees in the newly-selected region. As we’ve noted before, AWS pricing is slightly higher for the Australian region, so you may want to shut down other EBS instances after copying if you don’t need to operate in multiple locations.

Amazon’s blog posts notes that it will add the ability to copy Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) in the near future.